Fixing duplicates and re-synching

Fixing duplicates and re-synching

About a month ago, my FTM tried to sync to Ancestry and had an error. I synched again - another error. A few days later, I opened the program by mistake and since it was set to sync automatically, it tried synching yet again and froze, so I had to force the program to close.

The result of all of these errors was that my tree became littered with duplicates (actually quadruplets) of a large number of people. Multiple copies of people, sources and media files. It was a huge mess. Lesson learned: turn off auto sync!

Since Ancestry.com doesn't have a merge duplicates function, I did my cleanup in FTM. I merged nearly 1000 people, then went person by person to delete the extra copies of sources and media, and am just about back to where the tree should be, with single versions of every person, image and source. But now that I'm almost done cleaning things up, I'm afraid to sync it back to Ancestry. Obviously, I'll back the FTM tree up first, but when I try to sync, I'm afraid all I'll end up doing is creating MORE duplicates on the online tree and pulling the Anestry.com tree's duplicates back into my newly-tidied FTM tree.

My question: since I'm pretty sure you can't tell FTM to sync only one way, I made sure not to make any changes to the Ancestry.com tree once I started fixing it in FTM. So when it comes time to sync, there shouldn't be anything online changed since the last sync other than media. (MY mother is an editor to the tree and deleted all the duplicated photos, leaving only the oldest - original - versions of each.) When the trees sync, I know it pulls new info and changes, but what does it do for people and media that were merged or deleted? In other words, if you delete a person or picture online, then sync, does it delete them from FTM as well? I'm afraid when I sync all my duplicates will just come back and the last 3 weeks of work will be for nothing.

I really don't want to have to delete my online tree and re-upload the FTM version. I'd have to re-invite everyone that's got access to it and would probably lose a lot of the linked sources since I'm not sure they ever fully synched to FTM. I was so happy when FTM 2012 added the sync ability, but boy what a headache it created!

Sorry this got so long. Thanks for reading, and for any help you have to offer.